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Artist Elizabeth Magill (b. 1959)

Date2000

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions152.4 x 182.9 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Purchased, 2003. © Elizabeth Magill.

Object number1968

DescriptionElizabeth Magill is primarily a painter who since the late 1990s has used landscape as an artibrary device, a backdrop to her thoughts on the world. Recollections of Antrim where she was raised, the landscape of her past, as she calls it, have been significant imaginatively. At times employing various media including photography and collage to interplay with paint, Magill draws on a variety of images and materials ranging from contemporary kitsch to the romantic sublime paintings of Casper David Friedrich to forge "landscapes" which feel familiar but which are non-specific.

Close is a depiction of an indeterminate suburb during dawn or dusk, with rhinestone stars glimmering in the sky above. Light in distant windows indicates a human presence in an otherwise remote setting. The crepuscular purple tones impair vision and create ambiguous feelings of repose and unease. Magill typically relies on chance to activate her process. Her method is to pour layer upon layer of thinly diluted paint onto the horizontally placed canvas until some clue emerges to indicate a direction. Scarring and congealed paint contribute to the emergent scenario.

Based in London since 1982, Elizabeth Magill came to prominence in the seminal 'British Art Show' in 1990.

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